Analysis: In the last three days before the Alberta vote, the cracks in the Wildrose were showing

Alberta Election 2012: In the last three days before the Alberta vote, the cracks in the Wildrose were showing

CALGARY — In the opening hours of the last three days of the Alberta election, Danielle Smith brings her own brand of conservatism into the heart of the enemy territory: the riding of Progressive Conservative leader Alison Redford.

It’s 9 a.m. Friday on a big, blue-sky Alberta morning and most polls are predicting a shoo-in for Smith’s Wildrose party in Monday’s provincial election, and a final end to a creaky 41-year Tory dynasty.

All the hyper-organized Wildrose campaign needs now is for Smith to defuse a simmering controversy before chalking up the win.

At this campaign stop, little is left to chance inside the skaters’ dressing room in the Glamorgan Community Centre, called the Glam Shack.

A woman in heels sprays down and rubs out the creases of a large Alberta flag; just another hint of what Wildrose strategist Vitor Marciano never tires of calling the most professional campaign “anybody has ever seen in the history of Alberta.”

It’s the kind of attention to detail you admire if you’re on the inside of politics, and ignore if you’re not.

A party supporter leans on a ramp railing and gripes about all the negative attention in recent days to the past writings of a Wildrose candidate, Allan Hunsperger, who claimed gays would burn in a “lake of fire.”

“This is the thing about religion. Who knows?” the man says of the afterlife.

Today’s event is supposed to be the beginning of 72 hours that will bring the Wildrose to victory.

Instead, what the Wildrose caravan doesn’t know — couldn’t know — is this day marks the beginning of one of the most spectacular collapses in Alberta political history.

And this is not just any riding Smith is preparing to visit three days before voters head to the polls.

Calgary-Elbow is the one-time political home of Ralph Klein, the king of conservative politics that Wildrosers remember fondly. It’s now home to Redford, whose progressivism Wildrosers loathe.

To Smith’s left, as she steps behind the podium, is pastor and Wildrose candidate Ron Leech, who mused five days earlier that “as a Caucasian I have an advantage” in the multi-ethnic riding of Calgary-Greenway.

A Wildrose government, Smith tells reporters, will never tolerate discrimination of any kind.

Leech pulls his chin back into his neck and stares down, as Smith notes his “hurtful” words. He gulps.

But when it’s all over, the 65-year-old smiles with the relief of a child who has survived a thorough dressing-down.

“If I believed that Ron was a racist, I would have fired him. But he’s not. He simply misspoke,” Smith says, before introducing Leech’s campaign manager, Ali Waissi, who is a Kurd from Iran.

In the opposition camp, though, they can hardly believe their luck. “I don’t know why they did the news conference on Friday. That was a mistake,” Tory strategist Stephen Carter later says.

“The story was dead.”

Three days later on election night, the dreams, predictions and expectations of those aboard the big green Danielle Smith campaign bus — of a Wildrose majority government — crumble underneath an unexpected Tory surge.

But little moments, seen in hindsight, can tell a thing or two about what’s to come.

Suspicions that some Wildrose candidates are intolerant nag at the campaign, and Smith can never quite shed them in those final days.

Later that Friday morning, those suspicions tug at her again when the campaign bus pulls into a Falconridge strip mall for a rally.

Just two hours after the Wildrose team believes they’ve finally defused the so-called “Bozo Eruptions,” a reporter on board pipes up: “Uh, oh.”

There’s a new Leech video making the rounds, this one espousing the very same views on race and politics he’s been apologizing for all week (it was later revealed this TV interview was taped prior to the big blow-up).

As Smith’s bus prepares to park just opposite the No Frills grocery store, there is Leech again, a beaming face in a crowd at a campaign stop for Calgary-Cross candidate Happy Mann.

The doors to the bus open. Leech is easily spotted, reporters make a beeline, and the silver-haired Wildrose hopeful faces yet another volley of questions about his views.

“I am not a racist,” he maintains.

What is striking about Danielle Smith’s campaign bus is how little time is actually spent campaigning, and how much is spent driving along dreary multi-lane highways, through suburban fast food restaurant strips, and past grey farm fields untouched since last year.

The bus acts as a cocoon, connected to the outside world by media reports and blogs, fickle Twitter, and by phone calls to friends and volunteers.

Harrison, 29, is one of at least five people on the rolling green machine under 35 years of age.

The young ones wear black suits, a kind of Ottawa party staffer uniform, even though most grew up in Alberta or live here now.

The old hand aboard is Jim Armour, a vice-president with Summa Strategies in Ottawa, and former Stephen Harper communications director and aide to Reform leader Preston Manning.

Affable, experienced, not prone to panic, and easy to talk to, Armour joined the campaign as a friend of University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan and former Enmax chairman Cliff Fryers, two top Wildrose campaign managers.

Also on board are Smith’s husband, her parents, and two dogs, a Labradoodle called Caine and a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Turk.

Caine likes to pad up and down the aisle, and when the door opens, cranes his neck to peek out.

The hours drag in this final campaign weekend: Friday afternoon to Lethbridge and return to Calgary that night; Saturday from Calgary to Fort Saskatchewan; Sunday down Highway 2 from Edmonton to Calgary.

Smith insists she never lets her mind wander forward to Monday night and the prospect of knocking off a political dynasty.

History is instructive here.

Two decades ago, she was PC president at the University of Calgary campus club when Ralph Klein was elected Alberta Tory leader.

He trailed after the first round of the leadership contest by just one vote to rival Nancy Betkowski. While she was “measuring the drapes,” Smith says, Klein went out and sold thousands of memberships to claim the battle on the second ballot.

“That was sort of an early lesson for me, looking at that, about how if you’re focusing on what comes next, you may end up sacrificing the victory,” Smith says.

The drives between stops are long precisely because the Wildrose are targeting 23 swing seats they think are on the cusp of going their way.

That includes Redford’s Calgary-Elbow, a riding Wildrose senses is in play with what later proves to be wildly optimistic expectations (Redford won by more than 5,000 votes).

“Maybe it’s a microcosm of the entire campaign, to see what’s going on in that riding, is this battle between conservatism and progressivism,” Smith declares.

In 72 hours, almost every riding Wildrose rolls through is that of a PC cabinet minister, former minister or the party leader.

The upstart Wildrose still has wide-eyed expectations of winning big.

Late Friday evening, a group of Hutterite women recognize Smith at a Tim Hortons in Fort Macleod.

“The election’s coming up, Monday or Tuesday, Monday, I think,” one of the women says after chatting with the Wildrose leader.

“I think the menfolk like her.”

On Saturday morning, Sylvan Lake, a few dozen Wildrose supporters gather at the Smash Mart, an empty convenience store along a languid street by the water.